Ratchet & Clank: Into The Nexus [Official Thread]

AU: November 6, 2013NA: November 12, 2013JP: December 12, 2013EU: November 15, 2013

Ratchet and Clank are back!

The beloved duo return with an original single-player epilogue to the acclaimed Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus is a story-driven platform adventure with humor and heart, featuring outrageously upgraded weapons, extreme planet hopping and brand new worlds begging to be explored. Into the Nexus marks a true return to form for the acclaimed series.

After one of the most infamous manhunts in galactic history results in the capture of Vendra Prog, Ratchet and Clank offer to escort the dangerous criminal to the Vartax Detention Center. After a daring orbital jailbreak at the forgotten edge of the galaxy, Ratchet and Clank find themselves lost in an abandoned sector. There, in deepest space, they uncover an inter-dimensional event that threatens the universe—and forces Ratchet to decide what’s really important.

Features

*A return to the Future – Series protagonists, Ratchet and Clank, return along with Captain Qwark, Talwyn, Cronk and Zephyr in a brand-new, story-driven single-player adventure
*Even more crazy weapons and gadgets for your arsenal – Arm yourself with a variety of exotic new weapons and gadgets, including the Winterizer and Nether Blades
*Clank strikes back – All-new gameplay offers inter-dimensional challenges where Clank can alter gravity, manipulate objects and solve mind-bending platforming puzzles
*Discover new worlds… and the dangers of space – Traverse through the zero-gravity of space and explore a mysterious sector filled with new planets to explore along with hidden dangers and dark secrets yet to be uncovered

I'm also playing right now, I come from playing R&C games like Tools of Destruction, Crack in Time, and Quest for booty. Haven't played the other recent R&C games like All4one or the other one (tower defense).

Generally, Into the Nexus is a standard R&C game, but I dunno, something just feels wrong about this game. Like it was developed by somebody else, or something. Doesn't feel right to me for some reason. It even has a different look to it (more cartoony). Although I do like the frames-per-second smoothness of it.

Controls are all pretty standard, however I dislike a few changes they made.

1. In previous titles, Ratchet can throw his Omniwrench by pressing R2 and square. In this game, it requires you hold L1 instead, which is also the default aiming for the weapons. I personally hate this change. There is absolutely no reason they should have changed this, as you can still long-jump and high-jump by holding R2 and jumping, just as in previously titles.

2. In previous titles you could strafe by holding L2, but in this title it requires you to aim with L1 to strafe. R&C games were never really "aiming" kind of games like FPS titles. The auto-lock and L2 strafing worked flawlessly in previous titles, and on rare occasions you would aim with a weapon to gain some extra distance or precision. But it seems like they wanted to try to make it feel more like a shooter game by requiring the use of L1 aiming to strafe, and it annoys the heck out of me.

Other issues/negatives for me:

3. Smashing boxes is much less satisfying. In previous titles like crack in time, smashing a large amount of boxes was loud and made it feel significant as you could hear tons of bolts being absorbed by Ratchet, almost like winning the jackpot on a quarter machine in a casino. In this game the "clinging" sound, and rate of that sound, is reduced by an exponential margin, and it just feels and sounds weak and unsatisfying to smash crates. Even the crate smashing itself is weak and doesn't have much 'impact'.

4. On some cut-scenes the audio is atrocious, sounds like the bitrate is like 64kbps or less, and the sound is horribly tinny sounding. For a small sized game such as this on a blu-ray disk, there is no excuse for poor audio quality. At the very least audio should be MP3 quality, but more realistically lossless quality due to the amount of space they have available on the disk. Cutting audio corners like this makes the game feel like it is a multi-platform limited game, that has to use garbage audio due to other platforms not having the space on their physical media (like the 360's DVD).

There is many things I do like, such as a nice return from ToD (weapon upgrading style), and a few other things. Overall I am enjoying the game, but it just feels different and wrong, and I cannot get past that feeling as I play more and more. It's a R&C game like we all are used to, but at the same time... it isn't. Hard to explain.

I'm also playing right now, I come from playing R&C games like Tools of Destruction, Crack in Time, and Quest for booty. Haven't played the other recent R&C games like All4one or the other one (tower defense).

Generally, Into the Nexus is a standard R&C game, but I dunno, something just feels wrong about this game. Like it was developed by somebody else, or something. Doesn't feel right to me for some reason. It even has a different look to it (more cartoony). Although I do like the frames-per-second smoothness of it.

Controls are all pretty standard, however I dislike a few changes they made.

1. In previous titles, Ratchet can throw his Omniwrench by pressing R2 and square. In this game, it requires you hold L1 instead, which is also the default aiming for the weapons. I personally hate this change. There is absolutely no reason they should have changed this, as you can still long-jump and high-jump by holding R2 and jumping, just as in previously titles.

2. In previous titles you could strafe by holding L2, but in this title it requires you to aim with L1 to strafe. R&C games were never really "aiming" kind of games like FPS titles. The auto-lock and L2 strafing worked flawlessly in previous titles, and on rare occasions you would aim with a weapon to gain some extra distance or precision. But it seems like they wanted to try to make it feel more like a shooter game by requiring the use of L1 aiming to strafe, and it annoys the heck out of me.

Other issues/negatives for me:

3. Smashing boxes is much less satisfying. In previous titles like crack in time, smashing a large amount of boxes was loud and made it feel significant as you could hear tons of bolts being absorbed by Ratchet, almost like winning the jackpot on a quarter machine in a casino. In this game the "clinging" sound, and rate of that sound, is reduced by an exponential margin, and it just feels and sounds weak and unsatisfying to smash crates. Even the crate smashing itself is weak and doesn't have much 'impact'.

4. On some cut-scenes the audio is atrocious, sounds like the bitrate is like 64kbps or less, and the sound is horribly tinny sounding. For a small sized game such as this on a blu-ray disk, there is no excuse for poor audio quality. At the very least audio should be MP3 quality, but more realistically lossless quality due to the amount of space they have available on the disk. Cutting audio corners like this makes the game feel like it is a multi-platform limited game, that has to use garbage audio due to other platforms not having the space on their physical media (like the 360's DVD).

There is many things I do like, such as a nice return from ToD (weapon upgrading style), and a few other things. Overall I am enjoying the game, but it just feels different and wrong, and I cannot get past that feeling as I play more and more. It's a R&C game like we all are used to, but at the same time... it isn't. Hard to explain.

Dang, can't say I really noticed any of those issues, except maybe the sound quality here and there.

Overall, I'm very happy with this game. Not only do I still have another level to go, but there's still more secrets and I need to get, and this game is designed for a second playthough. Good value.

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